Should regulators approve Google’s proposed $32 billion purchase of Wiz, a cloud security startup, it’ll become Google’s largest acquisition ever, dwarfing the $12.5 billion Google paid for Motorola in 2012. Google later sold Moto to Lenovo, but Wiz might not suffer the same fate. That’s because Wiz isn’t in the business of manufacturing smartphones. Wiz might be a lot more important than that, considering the age of AI that we’re now entering.
While significant effort is being devoted to advanced AI models run on devices with limited resources, like mobile phones, we’ll still need cloud processing for the more advanced AI features that companies like OpenAI and Google release. At the same time, AI is becoming increasingly more personal, whether it runs on-device or in the cloud. Then there’s AI use in the enterprise, which might become even more sophisticated in the near future.
Cloud security will be more important than ever, and it makes a lot of sense that Google is looking to bolster the security of its Google Cloud product by buying one of the hottest cloud security startups in the world.
The acquisition isn’t just about AI features running in the cloud. We’ve been using the cloud for all sorts things well before the age of AI arrived. Regardless of the supplier of said cloud offerings, strong security is needed so hackers can’t breach services and access sensitive user data.
Offering enterprise customers top-of-the-line security across cloud services might be a key differentiator for Google Cloud compared to cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft, Google’s biggest competitors.
Google wanted to buy the five-year-old startup last year and was ready to pay $23 billion. The talks fell through last July. Following the failed acquisition negotiations, Wiz wanted to go for an initial public offering instead.
As The Verge points out, Google might have been worried about additional anti-trust issues under the Biden administration. Those worries aren’t necessarily gone now that a friendlier administration has taken over. Google might still see some pushback from Trump’s FTC over the acquisition.
However, the deal has a better chance of going through. Also, Google plans to keep Wiz cybersecurity offerings in place for Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure cloud services. Wiz cofounder and CEO Assaf Rappaport confirmed in a blog post Google’s proposed acquisition without mentioning the purchase price. He noted that Wiz would continue to provide security to Google Cloud competitors:
Today’s news comes back to that same guiding principle. Wiz and Google Cloud are both fueled by the belief that cloud security needs to be easier, more accessible, more intelligent, and democratized, so more organizations can adopt and use cloud and AI securely.
We both also believe Wiz needs to remain a multicloud platform, so that across any cloud, we will continue to be a leading platform. We will still work closely with our great partners at AWS, Azure, Oracle, and across the entire industry.
Rappaport also mentioned AI several times in the blog post, including the advantages Google’s AI will bring to Wiz’s security products:
Wiz has achieved so much in a relatively short period, but cybersecurity moves at warp speed and so must we. The time is now.
We expect this change to enable us to execute and innovate even faster. Becoming part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs: it will accelerate our rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a standalone company.
[Google’s cloud] resources and AI expertise will significantly bolster Wiz in important ways for the people who matter most, [including customers, partners, and employees.]
The inclusion of Wiz security alongside Google’s own cloud security advancements should make Google Cloud even more appealing to customers. Even if large companies do not switch services to Google Cloud but pick Wiz tools to secure their AWS and/or Azure servers, it’ll still help with Google’s bottom line, especially over the long run.
Google is paying a massive fee to own Wiz. It wouldn’t do it without seeing a future where Wiz security helps it make back that money and then some.
As for what makes Wiz cybersecurity so compelling, it’s the company’s approach to handling cloud security. Companies going to Wiz for cloud cybersecurity do not need to install programs on their servers so those agents can monitor for threats. Instead, Wiz connects directly to the respective cloud providers and then gathers information about the cloud configurations.
That’s what makes Wiz solutions work with any cloud provider and why Wiz security will remain available to Amazon and Microsoft cloud customers even after the acquisition.
Also, Wiz security offers customers AI-powered, immediate, actionable information that informs companies of how their cloud security issues might impact operations and user data security. Wiz can help prevent some attacks rather than providing reports of how the breaches occurred.
Finally, Wiz is also known for finding a few key vulnerabilities associated with Azure infrastructure, like ChaosDB. Similarly, Wiz identified issues in Oracle and IBM clouds. More recently, Wiz found a massive DeepSeek security issue, a database containing user data that anyone could access, suggesting the Chinese AI’s first major hack might have already happened.
To put things in perspective, Wiz already works with 40% of the Fortune 100 companies. That’s enough to explain why Google would spend tens of billions on a relatively new security player. Wiz was founded in early 2020.
